How Much Will You Pay for 2/3 Stop?

The AF-S DX NIKKOR 35mm f/1.8 G is a great lens. It’s small, it’s sharp, it’s fast, it’s cheap. And it irks me to no end that it’s sooo close to working perfectly on an FX body. I just can’t believe Nikon couldn’t have made the image circle just a tiny bit larger to work in the FX format.

A 35mm lens is so important to the full frame format. And unless I want to spend a lot of coin for a heavy, bulky zoom with 35mm in its range, my options are limited. The AF NIKKOR 35mm f/2.0 would be fine. But it’s just not as sharp as the 1.8 which I already own.

But for only $1,400.00 and almost a pound more than the f/1.8, I could own the AF-S NIIKKOR 35mm f/1.4 G. That’s a high price to pay indeed for 2/3 of a stop. And until that day arrives, I can tell you that I will be using my DX-NIKKOR 35mm f/1.8 G on my D610.

When mounted to a full-frame camera, one would be hard-pressed to find anything out of place. Not until you engage the depth-of-field preview do you notice the clipped corners. And when shooting at large apertures, which is very likely with this super-sharp lens, the rolloff isn’t all that objectionable. Almost Holga-like, It would easy enough to almost completely eliminate through post-processing. But stop down for extra sharpness and depth of field, and you will start to see the shortcomings in the form of abrupt black corners.

Original Nikon D610 image as it would appear with the AF-S DX-NIKKOR 35mm f/1.8 G.

But consider this; much of the time we tend to crop images anyway. Reducing the frame size only 15% will eliminate the vignetting altogether for a 3:2 image. This makes it equivalent to about a 40mm lens close to the “ideal” normal lens of 43mm. (That would require a 19% reduction.)

Same image as above, cropped 15%; approximately the angle of a 40mm lens.

Want to shoot square like a Holga? No problem. Just shoot away and crop 1:1 in post.

If you like the 8x10 format, you can crop 5:4, and that will just about eliminate the dark corners. 

Panoramas you say? Can do. A 2:1 crop will also completely eliminate the vignetting, and this lens is nice and sharp at the borders, so you lose nothing. See the sample images below for examples of all these crops.

The same image as above, cropped 1:1.

Cropping the image 5:4 will almost entirely eliminate the vignetting,
which could be removed entirely through post-processing.

The 2:1 crop is also a good option, producing a nice panorama. Again, the corners could be fixed if necessary.

If any of this sounds appealing to you, then by all means, use that DX lens on your FX camera, and forgive Nikon for their short-sightedness! They did after all make a small, sharp, fast and cheap AF-S 75mm f/1.8 portrait lens for the DX, and it works just fine as a 50mm normal lens on a full frame camera!